A lesson from last week's D.C. fiasco

The US House of Representatives gave us a Christmas present of sorts last week.

The House and Senate have been working on legislation that would extend payroll tax breaks for low and middle income workers and that would maintain unemployment benefits. Both were set to expire at the end of 2011, and President Obama and Senate and House Democrats have been pushing for an extension.

Republicans hadn't supported the extension, saying they wanted long term reductions in spending and federal permit approval of a new petroleum pipeline in Alaska.

The president and Senate leaders, both Republican and Democrat, reached an agreement last week that would have given a short term extension of unemployment benefits, maintained the tax reduction and put the pipeline on track for approval and thereby given time in 2012 to work on a long term solution.

However, conservative Republicans in the House rebelled, saying they wanted more spending cuts and a long term solution now, apparently undercutting speaker Rep. John Boehner who, according to Senate leaders, had endorsed the deal.

The Senate had already adjourned for the holidays when Boehner announced no deal and demanded the Senate come back to negotiate.

For a while, it looked like our payroll taxes were going to go up on January 1 and the unemployment benefits would disappear.

The president, Democrats and the public reacted. The pressure got to Boehner and the conservatives, and they agreed to the Senate plan.

I guess that the Republicans didn't want to be known as the party opposed to raising taxes on the top 1 percent of incomes while approving the end of a tax break for the middle and lower income earners.

I hope this episode wakes up the conservative branch and its supporters. Their constant opposition to any initiative from Obama or the Democrats isn't productive. Our country is facing some difficult challenges, and we need to spend energy on addressing them, not waging a continual negative campaign against the president no matter what the issue is, and certainly not a campaign that is willing to sacrifice the well being of the citizens just to oppose him.